


I'm with you to the end

by Chelonie



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, BAMF Hermione Granger, Don’t copy to another site, F/M, Fix-It, Gen, Master of Death (Harry Potter), Not Canon Compliant - Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-25
Updated: 2019-07-26
Packaged: 2020-07-19 16:26:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19977052
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chelonie/pseuds/Chelonie
Summary: At the Battle of Hogwarts, Hermione joins Harry in the Pensieve to watch Snape's memories. She's not about to let him go to the Forest alone.





	1. The Forest

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hermione and Harry go into the Forest to face Voldemort together.

Harry and Hermione tumbled out of the pensieve together after watching Snape's memories, and landed on the floor of the Headmaster's office, staring at one another. Finally, Hermione broke the silence.

"Well, this sucks."

Harry started laughing at that total understatement, and so did Hermione, and somewhere along the way it turned into crying, their arms around each other, their foreheads pressed together.

"He could have told me..." Harry said. "Dumbledore could have said I would have needed to die. I could have turned myself over at the start of the battle, before so many people died," Harry said bitterly.

"We had to find the diadem. We couldn't have done that with Voldemort inside the school," Hermione reminded him. "But you're right. He should have told you. He had no right."

Harry put a hand to Hermione's cheek. "Tell everyone - Ron and Neville and Luna and Ginny-"

"You stop right there Harry James Potter!" Hermione said. "I'm not telling anyone anything, because I'm going with you!"

* * *

The only reason Hermione won that argument was because she disarmed Harry before he could stun her and sneak off without her. She tucked his wand (formerly Draco's wand) into her sleeve, and reminded him that they were together to the end.

"Hermione! You don't need to die too!"

"Harry, we always knew we weren't likely to live. I'm not letting you walk to your death alone. I'll be under the cloak, right beside you. I'll kill the snake, and hopefully Riddle too, before they notice me," Hermione said.

"The prophecy says it would have to be me or Neville..." Harry said.

"Oh bollocks to that - the prophecy says no such thing! You have the power to vanquish, you can't live while the other survives, but the only one? That's not what it says. And even if it did, you wouldn't stop me from trying. Every time you've faced Riddle before, you've been alone, but not this time. I'm a witch, of the house of Gryffindor, and I will be right there with you. Now hand over the cloak," Hermione said.

Harry didn't dare refuse her. He gave her Death's Cloak, and she vanished from sight. When they had used it as children, they had simply thrown it over the three of them, and their hands or feet had peeked out. But when worn as a proper cloak, fastened around one person's neck, it concealed completely. Even the wand in her hand was invisible, though it protruded from the sleeve. She tapped it on Harry's head, to cast a Disillusionment charm - not as effective as the Cloak, but it would allow them to leave the Castle, cross the battleground, and enter the Forest.

* * *

They walked side by side, hand in hand, trying to avoid anyone. But when they saw Neville, carrying Colin Creevy's body, they had to stop.

"Harry's not turning himself over, is he?" Neville asked anxiously.

"Fuck that!" Hermione said. "No, what we're doing it sneaking into their camp to kill the snake. But if we fail, you have to make sure it gets done, Neville. Kill the snake, then Riddle. Okay?"

"Kill the snake," Neville said. "Got it."

They kept going, stepping past bodies. Hermione held in her sobs at the wreckage of Lavender Brown, unsure if she was alive or dead, but she could do nothing for her now except complete their mission. 

* * *

Harry thought of telling Hermione that he had been lying when he'd told Ron he thought of Hermione as a sister. Hermione thought of telling Harry that she'd loved him since he'd leapt on a troll to save her. But they were walking to certain death, so they didn't say these things. It was enough that in the darkest moment of their lives, they would never abandon one another.

* * *

They past the chill of the Dementors together, but when their worst memories were all around them, lying broken and burning on the ground, it turned out that Dementors weren't as scary as before. Neither had the strength to call a Patronus - just the strength to stand together and keep walking, and the Dementors had their orders. They knew that Harry Potter was meant to pass them, and they were unable to sense Hermione as long as she wore Death's cloak.

"This is why he gave me the Stone," Harry whispered. "So I could call my parents and Sirius to walk with me."

"Do you want to use it?" Hermione whispered back.

Harry considered, but finally said, "No. I'll be with them soon enough. You?"

"I don't think it would be right. The people I'd most want to see are either muggles or they just died today. They shouldn't be dragged into this," Hermione said.

* * *

They found Yaxley and Dolohov in the Forest and followed them, silently and invisibly, to the clearing that had once been the home of Aragog's family. And when Voldemort said, "I thought he would come. I expected him to come," Hermione silently handed Bellatrix's wand to Harry so he could cancel the Disillusionment on himself.

"I'm here," Harry said. Hermione stepped behind him and touched his back. _I'm here. You won't die alone._

* * *

"Harry Potter..." Voldemort said, his head tilted curiously. "The Boy-Who-Lived." 

Hermione's eyes were on the snake, her wand ready. It was in a magical bubble, but there was no magic shield against the killing curse other than love's sacrifice. She had hate enough to power the spell - hadn't she worn Voldemort's horcrux herself? Hadn't she held Harry after his vision-nightmares of Voldemort? Hadn't she seen what he'd done to her friends, to her classmates, to her country?

Two words were pronounced at the same time, from two different lips. Green light flashed. 

Hermione was on the move before Harry hit the ground.

She cast again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Halloween 1981: Harry faces Voldemort alone due to parents being dead  
> 1st year: Harry faces Voldemort alone due to teeny potion bottle that only allows enough for one person  
> 2nd year: Harry faces Voldemort alone due to strategic cave-in  
> 3rd year: -  
> 4th year: Harry faces Voldemort alone due to portkey  
> 5th year: Harry and Dumbledore face Voldemort together. Le gasp!  
> 6th year: -  
> 7th year: Harry faces Voldemort alone in the Forest due to Gryffindorishness. Then faces Voldemort again in the Great Hall surrounded by people who are cheering for him.


	2. The Gryffindor Common Room

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry and Hermione in Limbo.

The first thing Hermione noticed was that her mouth was clean. She couldn't remember the last time she'd been able to properly brush and floss, and mouth freshening charms just didn't do the same job. Shell Cottage? Yes, she must have last brushed her teeth at Shell Cottage.

But her mouth was clean. And it felt _glorious._

The rest of her was clean too, she realised as she took stock of her body. Clean and _healed_. Nothing hurt. She'd had so many burns and scratches and strained muscles and injuries that should have put her completely out of action, except that she'd had no choice but to keep going. 

This was how she knew she was dead. Because she was clean and healed.

Finally, she opened her eyes.

* * *

There seemed to be nothing around her, then the 'nothing' became white mist, and then she saw something in the mist - some _one_. 

"Harry!"

She crawled over to him, where he was just sitting up. 

"Where are we?" he asked. He wasn't wearing any glasses, but he seemed to be able to see her just fine.

She looked around, and the mist started to coalesce into shapes. "Limbo perhaps?" she said. "But it kind of looks like the... Gryffindor Common Room?"

As she said the words, the floor beneath them became one of the red and gold rugs that they had often spread out on to play games, and the squashy armchairs and sofas appeared out of the mist. 

"Did you get the snake?" Harry asked.

Another voice answered. "She's such a badarse warrior witch that she got the snake, _and_ finished Voldemort."

"Sirius!" Harry jumped on his godfather, who caught him and hugged him back. The two men fell back onto one of the sofas, and Hermione flopped down next to them. 

"Are you our guide to the afterlife?" Hermione asked.

Sirius laughed, that wonderful bark sounding laugh that had been so rare during his last year at Grimmauld Place. "Yeah, sort of. I had to punch Albus Dumbledore in the face to get the job. He wanted to come and give you both a bunch of self-righteous pontification to justify what he did, but..."

"Yeah, I'm not terribly happy with him right now," Hermione said. "I'd have hexed first and asked questions later. If it's possible to hex people in the afterlife."

Sirius shrugged. "About the true afterlife... I'm not allowed to say. This is Limbo, and nothing happens here."

Harry looked around the Common Room, which was growing more and more detailed. The notices on the board offering Skiving Snackboxes for sale. An ink stain on the sofa that he was sure he caused in 4th year. "So... why did we come here first?"

"You have a choice to make. Neither of you are entirely dead," Sirius said. Harry and Hermione just looked at one another. _What? Just... what?_

"Okay, I get Harry... he's survived the curse before. But I'm just Hermione," she said.

Harry bumped her with his shoulder. "Oi! There is no _just_ Hermione!"

"I know you both know the Tale of Three Brothers," Sirius said. "Dumbledore put you on the trail of the Deathly Hallows, but in an indirect way."

"We figured out that my cloak is one of them," Harry said. "And that he probably put the Resurrection Stone in the Snitch. But Voldemort had the Elder Wand."

"He had it, but he never mastered it," Hermione said. "He thought he could master it by killing Snape."

Harry suddenly realised. "But Snape didn't defeat the wand. It was Malfoy who disarmed Dumbledore. Then I wrestled Malfoy's wand off of him. It's felt friendly to me ever since."

"And then I disarmed you so you wouldn't go off into the Forest without me," Hermione said. "You can't be saying I'm Mistress of Death? Seriously?"

"I'm always Sirius," Sirius said. "Both of you are jointly Master and Mistress of Death. Not only did you both hold all three Hallows, you both understand Death, intimately, in a way few people do. You've both killed and you've both died. So you now have a choice. You can go back. Or you can go on."

"Back..." Hermione said. "If Voldemort's dead... it isn't everyone though. There were still Death Eaters, and Bellatrix, and Dementors and Giants. We could get killed right away again."

"And even when it's over, it'll be the Boy-Who-Lived all over again, for both of us. Or else we'll be budding Dark Lords. It's always been one or the other, all my life. Merlin, they're so fickle, they might put you in Azkaban for using the killing curse," Harry said.

"Or you could grow old, get married, have children, maybe Hermione becomes Minister for Magic by 2020 or something ridiculous. Harry you'd be teaching Defence at Hogwarts..." Sirius suggested.

"I don't want to lose you again," Harry said to Sirius. "If we go On... are my parents there?"

"They'll be there," he said. "And Kitten, your grandparents are there."

Hermione gasped and put her hands to her mouth.

Sirius laughed. "You didn't think muggles had an afterlife?"

"I... my muggle family has been cut out of everything else," she said. Hermione looked at Harry. "What do you want to do?"

* * *

Sirius walked away to allow them to huddle.

"Together," Hermione said. "Either way, we go together."

"But..." Harry said.

"Don't you 'but' me," Hermione said. "You're talking about me rising from the dead on my own? Or going to the afterlife, again, on my own? No way. We got this far together." She put her hand on Harry's. "To the end."

He pulled her close, until their foreheads were resting together. "To the end."

* * *

In one ending, they hug Sirius goodbye and the room dissolves into mist. They both wake on the forest floor, to find that mere seconds have passed. Bellatrix is dropping to her knees by Voldemort's body. Harry hits her with a killing curse before he rises to his feet. Hermione summones the Elder Wand from Voldemort's dead hand. The two of them begin to lay waste.

They walk out of the Forest, hand in hand, levitating Voldemort's body between them. What is left of the Dark Army breaks and flees.

Hermione Granger, the Witch Who Won, becomes more famous than Harry Potter had once been. She is far more prepared for her fame than Harry had been at age 11, and parlays it into lobbying for extensive reforms. She never becomes Minister for Magic, but only because she doesn't want the job. It would get in the way of her research. Harry Potter, once known as the Chosen One, is quite content to let his star fade. Children who grow up after the war know him only as the man who is always seen at Hermione Granger's side, if they know that much. 

Hagrid is the only survivor who saw the pair die, and no one really believes the story he sometimes tells at the Hogs Head over drinks, that they were both struck by the killing curse and recovered. Harry has a new lightning bolt scar over his heart. Hermione has one on her ribs.

Perhaps they marry one another and have children. 

They never name a child Albus Severus.

* * *

In another ending, they consider all the death they have seen, all the death they would still have to deal just to escape the Forest, all the heartache waiting for them, all the expectations that have been laid upon them since they were age 11 (or in Harry's case, age 1) and decide that they have done their part. 

Harry wants to be reunited with his parents. With Remus. With Hedwig. He doesn't want to let go of Sirius.

Hermione has no one to go back for. Her obliviated parents are safe in Australia, and she is ready and curious about what lies beyond.

Together, Harry and Hermione follow Padfoot through the portrait hole and go On. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> canon!Harry: So here I am, dead.  
> canon!Dumbles: Harry, my boy!  
> canon!Harry: Oh Dumbledore, you really were a great man! Oh the greatest!  
> canon!Dumbles: *pats self on back*
> 
>  _...How it would really go..._  
>  Harry: You! Why you? Why not my MOTHER? You know, she of the sacrificial love? Or my father, he of the 'he looks just like James'? Or maybe Sirius, the one parental figure I actually knew and loved and mourned?  
> Dumbledore: Aren't I so clever that I figured all these things out about (blah blah blah)...  
> Harry: Not really. If Hermione had had all the same starting information, she'd have worked all the same stuff out. You cripple your side of the war with your obsessive secret keeping, then congratulate yourself that you're the cleverest dead person around? I mean, you didn't even leave useful notes when you knew you were dying for an entire school year? You didn't even tell us how to destroy a horcrux, for fuck sake! Now get lost and send Mum in!


End file.
